Opus Heads to Big Screen

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CGI film based on Bloom County character.

By KJB

In a deal that may indicate more strained relations between Miramax / Dimension and Disney, Harvey Weinstein's studios announced that they have inked a deal with San Francisco based CGI animation studio Wild Brains to co-finance and co-produce animated films. The first project to be produced by this union is Opus, based on the titular character in Berkeley Breathed's comic strip, a continuation of the classic Bloom County comic strip.

As reported in the trade paper Variety, the timing for the deal seems curious. Weinstein's studios have been at odds with Disney for some time and Disney's own CGI partner, Pixar, is on its way out the door. Opus is also expected to take substantially less time to show up in cineplexes than many other CGI films &#Array; a script by Scary Movie 3 screenwriter Craig Mazin is due in a week and creator Breathed has already done some animatronics and character designs for the film.

This isn't the first time that Opus has appeared on film. The wise cracking penguin and his feline partner, Bill the Cat, appeared in the award winning short film A Wish for Wings That Work in 1991.